A Survey on Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology

Vedat Coskun Busra Ozdenizci Kerem Ok

This is the author copy of the paper " A Survey on Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology".
For the latest version, please go to http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11277-012-0935-5

Citation:
Coskun, V., Ozdenizci, B., & Ok, K. (2013). A Survey on Near Field Communication (NFC)
Technology. Wireless personal communications, 71(3), 2259-2294.

A Survey on Near Field Communication (NFC)

Technology
Abstract
Near Field Communication (NFC) as a promising short range wireless communication technology
facilitates mobile phone usage of billions of people throughout the world that offers diverse
services ranging from payment and loyalty applications to access keys for offices and houses.
Eventually NFC technology integrates all such services into one single mobile phone. NFC
technology has emerged lately, and consequently not much academic source is available yet. On
the contrary, due to its promising business case options, there will be an increasing amount of
work to be studied in the very close future. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in
a holistic approach with different perspectives, including communication essentials with
standards, ecosystem and business issues, applications, and security issues. Open research areas
and further recommended studies in terms of academic and business point of view are also
explored and discussed at the end of each major subjects subsection. This comprehensive survey
will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians as well as for business world interested
in NFC technology.

Keywords - Near Field Communication, NFC, Survey, Communication Essentials,

Ecosystem, Business, Security, Applications, Application Development, Secure Element

1. Introduction
Ubiquitous computing and most recently ambient intelligence are defined as
technology becomes invisible, embedded, and is enabled by simple interactions, attuned
to all our senses and adaptive to users and contexts [14]. Nowadays, technology has
been invisibly embedded into daily objects and they are becoming more and more
ubiquitous. The increasing mobility of computing devices provided by mobile
communications becomes an important step in the development of ubiquitous computing.
Mobile phones had already several communication options with the external
environments before the introduction of NFC technology. When the mobile phones were
initially introduced, the primary goal was to enable voice communication with the mobile
and wired phones. GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) communication
enabled functionality of mobile phones for several services, such as voice
communication, SMS (Short Messaging Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
and even Internet access. Bluetooth technology was introduced later to create personal
area wireless networks that connect peripherals with computing devices including mobile
phones.
Currently a new way of interaction approach by NFC technology, which is touching
paradigm, has been in question. This interaction can be identified as "the deliberate
bringing together of two devices, for the purpose of obtaining services" [17]. NFC as one
of the enablers for ubiquitous computing is a combination of contactless identification
and interconnection technologies [95] which requires bringing two NFC compatible
devices close to each other, essentially touching them. In accordance with [36], user first
interacts with a smart object (either an NFC tag, NFC reader, or another NFC enabled
mobile phone) using her NFC enabled mobile phone (in short: NFC mobile). After
touching occurs, NFC mobile may further make use of received data, or may alternatively
use provided mobile services such as opening a web page, making a web service
connection etc.

Smart Objects

User with NFC Mobile

Touch Based
Interaction

Figure 1. Touch Based Paradigm for NFC

Up to now, many NFC trials are conducted over the world, especially in payment
domain. All trials conclude the fact that with the development of NFC technology, mobile
phone is subject to become safer, more convenient, speedier and more fashionable
physical instrument. NFC technology allows people to integrate their daily-use loyalty
cards, credit cards etc. into their mobile phones. In addition to integrating those cards into
mobile devices, NFC technology brings innovation opportunities to mobile
communications. It enables two users to easily communicate and exchange data simply
by touching two mobile phones to each other. Moreover NFC technology gives NFC
reader capability to mobile phones; hence RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags can
be read.
An encouraging property of NFC technology is the assurance of secure storage of the
personal and private information on the secure element of the mobile phones those are
traditionally saved in other items such as credit or debit cards. Due to the technical
enforcement of touching paradigm, it is harder to tap the data since the mobile
communication is performed within a short distance.
With the increasing processing power of mobile phones, Internet access capability,
and many more features; innovative services are enabled by NFC technology. It is true
that NFC technology brings simplicity to transactions, provides easy content delivery and
enables information sharing. At the same time, it builds new opportunities for various
stake holders; mobile operators, banks, transport operators and merchants with faster
transactions, less cash handlings and new operator services.
This study presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach with
different perspectives; communication essentials, ecosystem and business issues,
applications and security issues; and also provides a comprehensive survey with open
research areas and guidelines.
The remainder of this paper is organized based on the major research areas of NFC
technology. In Section 2, we present the communication essentials related with the NFC
technology including operating modes and protocol stack architectures, NFC devices and
hardware issues, and finally data transmission properties on Radio Frequency (RF) layer.
In Section 3, the security and privacy issues regarding NFC technology is discussed. The
exploration of Secure Element (SE) and its management are discussed in Section 4. In
Section 5, the potential service domains of NFC technology are presented which show
NFC technologys increasing popularity by academicians, researchers and practitioners.
Furthermore, at the end of each major section we provide useful guidelines, and
recommend open research issues for the reader.

2. Near Field Communication Technology

NFC technology was jointly developed by Philips and Sony in late 2002 for contactless
communications [127]. It is a short-range half duplex communication protocol, which
provides easy and secure communication between various devices (Table 1). In
accordance with [94], NFC is distinct from far field RF communication that is used in

personal area and longer-range wireless networks. NFC relies on inductive coupling
between transmitting and receiving devices. The communication occurs between two
compatible devices within few centimeters with 13.56 MHz operating frequency [127,105,
89, 36].
Table 1. Comparison of WPAN Technologies [25, 88]
Parameter
Range
Data Rate
Cost
Power
Consumption
Spectrum
Security
Network Topology
Devices per
Network
Usability
Personalization
Flexibility
Setup Time

Bluetooth
10-100 m
0.8-2.1 Mbps
Low

Zigbee
10-100 m
0.02-0.2 Mbps
Low

NFC
4-10 cm
0.02-0.4 Mbps
Low

High

Medium

Low

2.4 GHz
Low
Piconets, Scatternets

2.4 GHz
Low
Star, Tree, Mesh

13.56 MHz
High
One to one

2 to 65000

Moderate, Data
Centric
Medium
High
Approx. 6 sec

Easy, Data Centric

Low
High
Approx. 0.5 sec

Easy, Human
Centric
High
High
Less than 0.1 sec

The acting two parts of NFC communication is categorized as initiator and target
devices. The Initiator is the device that initiates and guides the data exchange process
between the parties. The target is the device that responds to the requests made by the
initiator. According to [34], NFC protocol distinguishes between two modes of operation,
which are active mode and passive mode. In the active communication mode both
devices uses their own energy to generate their own RF field to transmit the data. In the
passive communication mode only initiator generates the RF field while the target device
makes use of the energy that is created by the active device.
Table 2. Active vs. Passive Communication Mode [security paper]
Device A
Active
Active
Passive

Device B
Active
Passive
Active

RF Field Generation
Generated by both devices
Generated by Device A only
Generated by Device B only

Communication Mode
Active Mode
Passive Mode
Passive Mode

There exist three NFC devices, which can involve in NFC communication: NFC
mobile, NFC tag, and NFC reader. Table 3 shows the possible interaction styles among
those NFC devices. NFC technology operates in three different operating modes:
reader/writer, peer-to-peer, and card emulation modes where communication occurs
between an NFC mobile on one side, and an NFC tag, an NFC mobile, and an NFC
reader on the other side respectively [100, 127]. Each operating mode uses distinct
communication interfaces (i.e. ISO/IEC 14443, FeliCa, NFCIP-1, NFCIP-2 interfaces) on
RF layer as well as has different technical, operational and design requirements [41, 44,
127].

Table 3. Interaction Styles of NFC Devices

Initiator Device

Target Device

NFC Mobile

NFC Tag

NFC Mobile

NFC Mobile

NFC Reader

NFC Mobile

In accordance with [36, 100, 127], the RF interface supports communication with data
rates of 106, 212 as well as 424 kbps as of today. As mentioned in [36, 162], NFC uses
different modulation schemes such as ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying) with different
modulation depth -100% or 10%- or load modulation and coding techniques such as
NRZ-L (Non-Return-to-Zero Level), Manchester and Modified Miller coding to transfer
data. In each NFC transaction, the NFC communication mode of an initiator or target NFC
devices (active or passive), the signaling and standards used in RF interface (NFCIP-1,
ISO/IEC 14443, JIS X 6319 Type F as FeliCa), and the data transfer rate is important in
defining the modulation and coding scheme that is used. The study [smart] shows the
summary of techniques used in NFC transaction depending on the direction of the
communication. ISO/IEC 18092 (NFCIP-1) is the combination of ISO/IEC 14443 Type A
and JIS X 6319 Type F]. The study [64] deals with the increase of data rates for proximity
coupling devices at 13.56MHz and NFC systems, and compares performance of ASK
and PSK modulation schemes in a real environment. It shows that PSK performs 23%
better in terms of field strength requirement and energy efficiency than ASK.

From Passive Device to Active Device

From Active Device to Passive Device

Figure 3. Modulation and Coding Schemes

2.1 NFC Mobile Architecture

NFC technology integrated (NFC enabled) mobile devices are typically composed of
various integrated circuits, such as a secure element (SE) and an NFC communication
interface as depicted in Figure 4. NFC interface is composed of a contactless,
analogue/digital front-end called as NFC Contactless Front-end (NFC CLF), an integrated
circuit called as NFC controller to enable NFC transactions, and an NFC antenna.
The study of [58] describes the antenna design methods in combination with
transponder system properties to show how to efficiently combine established chip
platforms with smaller antenna form factors. Similarly, in literature, other novel proposals
and experimental approaches can be found on optimizing the design of NFC antenna for
readers and transponders [22, 31, 32, 35, 114, 169], and also on the design of NFC
transceiver chipset [35, 113, 146] for improving the communication quality, RF interface
and security.

An NFC enabled mobile phone consists of secure element(s) for performing secure
transactions using NFC devices as well as storing sensitive data in a secure environment.
In accordance with [3, 60, 61, 143], secure element provides a dynamic and secure
environment for both programs and data. It enables storage of valuable, sensitive, and
private data such as credit card information of the user, and secure storage and
execution of NFC enabled services such as contactless payments, which is valid in card
emulation operating mode.
The mobile device may contain additional SEs based on the requirements. NFC
controller is connected to SEs through either Single Wire Protocol (SWP) [47] or NFC
Wired Interface (NFC-WI) [42]. However NFC literature does not include any comparison
analysis of both physical layers in terms of security, performance or other parameters yet.
The SE can be accessed and controlled from host controller (internally) as well as
from RF field (externally). The host controller, or baseband controller in other words, is
the heart of the NFC mobile. Host Controller Interface (HCI) creates a bridge between the
NFC controller and the host controller [48]. The host controller sets the operating modes
of the NFC controller through HCI, processes data that is sent and received, and
establishes the connection between the NFC controller and the secure element.

NFC enabled Mobile Phone

Baseband
Communication

Host Controller

ISO/IEC 7816
Interface

Host
Controller
Interface

Secure
Element

Mobile Network
Infrastructure

SWP or S2C

NFC
Controller

NFC Antenna
NFC Contactless
Front-End (CLF)

NFC Device
(1) NFC Tag
(2) NFC Mobile
(3) NFC Reader

Figure 4. General Architecture of NFC enabled Mobile Phones

2.2 NFC Operating Modes and Their Essentials

NFC technology benefits from various elements such as smart cards, mobile phones,
card readers, and payment systems. In accordance with [36], all of the proposed
candidates need to acquire accreditation from an assortment of governing bodies that
have the responsibility for controlling security and interoperability of NFC devices.
Various standardization bodies defined how the NFC technology should be integrated to
mobile phones and other related devices. Some other bodies defined the architectures
and standards for the security issues as well as the ancillary technologies for NFC
enabled mobile phones such as smart cards for NFC transactions. The common vision of
all standardization bodies is increasing the ease of access, interoperability, and security
for NFC technology.

The most important association that focuses on developing and improving the use of
short-range wireless interaction through NFC technology is NFC Forum [127]. It is a nonprofit industry association that was established with the aim of enabling NFC technology
at first, and making it spread around the world thereafter. The mission of NFC Forum is to
promote the usage of NFC technology by developing specifications, ensuring
interoperability among devices and services, and educating the market about NFC
technology. Up to now NFC Forum provided diverse specifications for the various
components of NFC technology such as LLCP (Logical Link Control Protocol) [124], NFC
Tag Types [125], NFC RTDs (Record Type Definitions) [120-123, 126] and so on. Hence
NFC literature does not include high amount of research issues in terms of
communication essentials; thus some experimental and performance testing studies can
be conducted.
The three NFC communication modes are defined based on which NFC device is
paired and performing communication with NFC mobile. The communication protocols,
standards, etc. differs for each operating mode.

2.2.1 Reader/Writer Mode Communication Essentials

In reader/writer operating mode, active NFC mobile initiates the wireless
communication, and can both read and modify the data stored in NFC tags. NFC tags are
actually passive RFID tags, which can be also referred as NFC transponders [58, 93,
103]. In this operating mode, NFC mobile is capable of reading NFC Forum mandated tag
types, which are Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 and Type 4 [125]. This enables mobile user to
retrieve the data stored in the tag and take appropriate action afterwards.
Initiator

Initiator generates the 13.56 Mhz magnetic field

ISO/IEC 14443 Type A, Type B and Felica
Communication Interface

Target

NFC
Tag

NFC Forum NDEF Message

Tag is powered by magnetic field and responses to the request

NFC Forum
Mandated
Tag Types

Figure 5. Reader/Writer Operating Mode

In addition to NFC forum mandated tag types, NFC Forum has standardized data
exchange format (i.e., NFC Data Exchange Format, NDEF) between communication
parties. NDEF defines the format of the data to be exchanged between two NFC devices
[119]; between active NFC device and passive tag, or active NFC device and active NFC
device.

Figure 6. NDEF Message with a Set of Records

Figure 7. NDEF Record Format

According to [119], NDEF is a binary message format that encapsulates one or more
application defined payloads into a single message as depicted in Figure 6. [144] defines
NDEF as a standardized format for storing formatted data on NFC tags and for
transporting data across a peer-to-peer NFC link.
An NDEF message contains one or more NDEF records. Records can be chained
together to support even larger payloads. A record is the unit for carrying a payload within
an NDEF message. Each NDEF record carries parameters for describing its payload;
payload length, payload type, and an optional payload identifier. NDEF records are
variable length records with a common format illustrated in Figure 7. Each individual field
in a record has different features. The details of each record in the figure can be found in
the specifications [119, 120]. The most important ones are the TNF (Type Name Format)
field, and the TYPE field. TNF field value indicates the structure of the value of the TYPE
field. TYPE field describes the type of the payload. Various record types for NDEF
messaging format are defined by NFC Forum [120-123, 126]. The record type string field
contains the name of the record type as record type name. Record type names are used
by NDEF applications to identify the semantics and structure of the record content.
Record type names may be MIME media types, absolute URIs (Uniform Resource
Identifiers), NFC Forum external type names or well-known NFC type names [119, 120,
127]. Each record type definition is identified by its record type name.

2.2.1.1 Protocol Stack Architecture for Reader/Writer Operating Mode

Figure 8 provides a useful protocol stack illustration for reader/writer mode [127]. The
NFC device operating in reader/writer mode has the following protocol stack elements:
Analogue and digital protocols are the lower protocols in physical layer
section. Analogue is related with RF characteristics of NFC devices and
determines the operating range of devices. Digital protocols refer to the digital

aspects of ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 14443 standards, and define building
blocks of communication. There is also another important specification by
NFC Forum at this level which is NFC Activities Specification. This
specification defines the required activities that set up communication in an
interoperable manner based on digital protocol specification such as polling
cycles, when to perform collision detection.
Tag operations indicate the commands and instructions used by NFC devices
to operate NFC Forum mandated tags which are Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, and
Type 4. They enable read and write operations by using the NDEF data
format & RTDs (i.e. Smart poster, URI RTDs) from/to a tag.
NDEF applications are based on NDEF specifications such as smart poster
applications and reading product information from NFC enabled smart
shopping fliers.
Non NDEF applications are vendor specific applications which are not based
on NDEF specifications such as electronic purse balance reader and
contactless ticket reader.

Figure 8. Protocol Stack of Reader/Writer Operating Mode

2.2.2 Peer-to-Peer Mode Communication Essentials

In peer-to-peer mode, two NFC mobiles establish a bidirectional connection to
exchange information as depicted in Figure 9. Peer-to-peer operating modes RF
communication interface is standardized by ISO/IEC 18092 as NFCIP-1, which enables
request-response model between two active devices [38, 58, 65]. In this mode, NFC
mobiles can exchange any kind of data such as business cards, digital photos, and so on.
According to the study [162], NFCIP-1 protocol provides a SAR (Segmentation and
Reassembly) Level 1 capability, as well as data flow control depending on the Go & Wait
principle usual for half duplex protocols. Furthermore, NFCIP-1 protocol allows error
handling by using accept (ACK) frame and reject (NACK) frame, provides an ordered
data flow, and performs the communication in the link layer which is reliable and error
free [162]. The study in [2] presents a simulation model for the NFCIP-1 over the network
simulator. The study indicates that NFCIP-1 protocol needs to be supported with other
techniques such as flow control mechanisms; hence the proposed model is a good
starting point for many research issues.
A new data link layer protocol, named as LLCP, is standardized by NFC Forum [65,
124] to support peer-to-peer communication between two NFC enabled devices. LLCP is
essential for any NFC application that performs bi-directional communication. LLCP
provides a solid ground for peer-to-peer mode applications and enhances the basic
functionalities provided by NFCIP-1 protocol as well. According to NFC Forum [124],
LLCP provides five important services; connectionless transport; connection-oriented

transport; link activation, supervision and deactivation; asynchronous balanced

communication, and protocol multiplexing.
NFCIP-1 takes the advantage of initiator-target paradigm in which the initiator and
target devices are defined prior to starting the communication. However the devices are
identical in LLCP communication. After the initial handshake, the decision is made by the
application that is running in the application layer. In study [67], a valuable comparison is
performed between NFCIP-1 and LLCP through a social networking application. Both
NFCIP-1 and LLCP were tested during the application development. Since LLCP does
not define which device will be the initiator, the user can easily experience in making
friends with LLCP. An extended investigation of LLCP with a simulation model is a
promising research area as well.
Initiator

Initiator generates the 13.56 Mhz magnetic field

Target

ISO/IEC 18092 NFCIP-1 Communication Interface

NFC Forum Logical Link Control Protocol
NFC Forum NDEF Message
Target responds request of the Initiator

Figure 9. Peer-to-Peer Operating Mode

2.2.2.1 Protocol Stack Architecture for Peer-to-Peer Operating Mode

Similarly according to the NFC Forum Specifications [127], an NFC device operating
peer-to-peer mode has the following protocol stack elements as depicted Figure 10:
Analogue and digital protocols are lower layer protocols standardized by
NFCIP-1.
LLCP allows transferring upper layer information units between two NFC
devices. Protocol bindings provide standard bindings to NFC Forum protocols
and allow interoperable use of registered protocols.
NFC Forum protocols are the ones that NFC Forum defines a binding to
LLCP, such as OBEX, IP.
Simple NDEF exchange protocol allows exchange of NDEF messages. It is
also possible to run other protocols over the data link layer provided by LLCP.
Applications may run over the simple NDEF exchange protocol, other
protocols or NFC Forum protocols. These applications are such as printing
from a camera, business card exchange etc.

Figure 10. Protocol Stack of Peer-to-Peer Operating Mode

2.2.3 Card Emulation Mode Communication Essentials

In card emulation mode, NFC devices use similar digital protocol and analogue
techniques with smart cards and they are completely compatible with the smart card
standards based on ISO/IEC 14443 Type A, Type B and FeliCa [100, 127]. As the user
touches her mobile phone to an NFC reader, NFC mobile behaves like a standard smart
card, thus NFC reader interacts with the applications on the SE. Only card emulation
mode uses an SE efficiently and securely, which performs functions that require high
security (Figure 11).
Initiator

Initiator generates the 13.56 Mhz magnetic field

NF
C

NFC
Reader

Target

ISO/IEC 14443 Type A, Type B and Felica

Communication Interface

Initiator reads the information stored

on NFC Mobile or SE

Figure 11. Card Emulation Operating Mode

2.2.3.1 Protocol Stack Architecture for Card Emulation Operating Mode

NFC devices those are operating in card emulation mode use similar digital protocol
and analogue techniques with smart cards and they are completely compatible with the
smart card standards (Figure 12). Card emulation mode includes proprietary contactless
card applications such as payment, ticketing and access control [127]. These applications
are based on ISO/IEC 14443 Type A, Type B and FeliCa communication interfaces.

Figure 12. Protocol Stack of Card Emulation Operating Mode

2.3 Open Research Issues

There are some other open research areas that should be improved more by
academicians and researchers. Some of the challenging studies on network, hardware as
well as software levels are listed below.
Development of alternative protocols for NFC additional to NFCIP-1, LLCP for
promoting P2P transactions,
Development of simulation modules for NFC protocols such as NFCIP-1,
Analysis of antenna coupling, RF efficiency, ferrite quality and cost saving
issues,
Development of simulation models for NFC tags as transponders,

10

Design of new modulation and coding techniques for NFC,

Exploration of simple and low-power modulation schemes,
Design of optimized high bandwidth policy,
Analysis of power saving and power consumption issues,
Proposal of manageable NFC functionality and user interfaces on NFC
mobiles in hardware as well as software aspect,
Examination of NFC Dynamic Tags which enables dynamic data, rather than
NFC Static Tags,
Integration of NFC technology with OS,
Development of Quality of Service mechanisms in NFC context.

3. Secure Element and Its Management

In accordance with [49], since NFC technology enables various contactless ticketing,
payment, and other similar applications, storing and managing valuable and private
information (e.g. credit card, debit information) in the secure area of the NFC mobile is a
requirement for NFC based systems. If not, the data could be transmitted via a GSM or
other interface to a third party who may misuse them. To solve such activities, relevant
NFC applications need to be executed and saved in a protected environment, which is
the memory of a secure element (SE) of NFC mobile. SE is combination of hardware,
software, interfaces, and protocols embedded in a mobile handset that enables secure
storage. The SE has also an operating system (e.g., MULTOS, JavaCard) that supports
the secure execution of applications and the secure storage of application data.
Up to now various SE alternatives entered into the market that can enable financial
institutions and other companies to offer secure NFC enabled services and empower the
NFC ecosystem take off. In accordance with the studies [36, 110, 143], mainly SE options
can be grouped under removable SEs, non-removable SEs, software based SEs on
dedicated hardware, and other flexible SE solutions. Figure 13 shows the currently
available SE options for each SE category. Understanding the characteristics of SEs
plays significant role for different stakeholders and pricing models in the NFC value chain.
The dominating SE will have a strong position to build trusted services on it.

Secure Elements (SEs)

Non-Removable SEs

Removable SEs

Flexible SE Solutions

Software Based SEs

- Embedded Hardware

- Sticker
- Secure Memory
Card (SMC)
- Universal
Integrated Circuit
Card (UICC)

- Different
Combinations of SIM/
UICC, SMC,
embedded hardware,
NFC controller and
antenna

- Trusted Mobile Base

Figure 13. Summary of SE Alternatives

Embedded SE: Embedded SE is a smart card that is integrated to the mobile

phone, which cannot be removed. According to the study [143], the level of
security provided by this SE is as high as the one supported by a smart card.
This chip is embedded into the mobile phone during manufacturing process
and must be personalized after the device is delivered to the end user [143].

11

Sticker: According to Mobey Forum [110], NFC stickers aim is to allow

service providers a quick way to launch pilots and start to deploy NFC
services such as payment, loyalty, transportation, and so on. Two types of
stickers are available; active and passive stickers. In theory, active stickers
enable all NFC services and give NFC functionality to non-NFC mobiles. Also
life cycle management of active stickers is possible because of their
connection with the mobile phones. They are mainly developed to give NFC
functionality to mobile phones, however when NFC mobile phones are spread
all over the world, their usage is decreased. There is not much practical
implementation of NFC services management with stickers [110].
SMC: Secure memory card (SMC) provides same high-level security as a
smart card provides, and it is compliant with most of the main standards and
interfaces of smart cards (e.g. GlobalPlatform, ISO/IEC 7816, JavaCard etc.).
As mentioned in [143], with the removable property and a large capacity
memory, an SMC can host high number of applications in it. Currently, most of
the trials are performed on SMCs.
UICC: UICC is a generic multi-application platform for smart card applications
where SIM or USIM is implemented upon. UICC provides an ideal
environment for NFC applications that are personal, secure, portable and
easily managed remotely via OTA technology [3, 60, 61]. It can host nontelecom applications from various service providers such as loyalty, ticketing,
healthcare, access control, and ID applications [110]. GlobalPlatform provides
the most promising standard for UICC life cycle management (or namely card
content management) with three different business models; simple as MNO
centric model, delegated model and full authorized as TSM centric model [3,
60, 61]. However, there are still some unsolved issues on UICC card
management in NFC based services. Hence there is not any UICC smart card
commercially available in the NFC market [110].
Flexible SE Solutions: In early years of NFC, because of lack of NFC
mobiles in the market, several alternative architectures have been proposed
to enable NFC to the mobiles without integrated NFC capability. Especially
SMC and SIM based SEs with built-in NFC antennas has acted as an
important NFC bridge devices (e.g., SMC hosting only NFC antenna and SE,
or hosting NFC chip, antenna and SE and so on) [36]. They shorten the timeto-market contactless payment and similar applications. The study of [98]
proposes an alternative that integrates NFC with SIM card; SIM Application
Toolkit.
TMB: Trusted Mobile Base (TMB) is a promising upcoming technology that is
proposed by Mobey Forum. It is hosted at the root of the mobile phones and
defined as a secure isolated section on the Core Processor Units (CPU) of
mobile phones [110]. Various secure NFC enabled applications can be
provided flexibly via OTA technology. According to [110], TMB has the full
potential of becoming a SE in the future.

3.1 Over-the-Air (OTA) Technology

Over-the-Air (OTA) technology contributes dynamic spirit of the NFC based system
adaptability to flexible environments [3, 102]. It enables loading and installation of new
NFC applications on SEs - especially on UICCs - remotely, activation and deactivation of
SEs, remote service management, life-cycle management of NFC applications on the
SEs, and other online services. High-capacity bearers those are being used in OTA
technology are very important in providing an NFC solution [158]. For instance, several
kilobytes of data needs to be transferred to the UICC based SE when downloading an

12

application activation data or an NFC application. Using GPRS/UMTS and the BIP
(Bearer Independent Protocol) protocol, applications are rapidly deployed OTA to the
UICC card.
Currently, most MNOs are capable of providing OTA solutions using their current
technology infrastructure. However, it is also possible to see that when required
infrastructure is set up by other entities, these entities can provide OTA service
independently from SE issuers or platform managers. One of the most appropriate cases
is to use OTA solution of Trusted Service Manager as a neutral entity within the NFC
ecosystem.
The studies [97, 100, 102] outline an infrastructure concept for setting up a
sustainable NFC ecosystem and introduce new concept as platform manager. According
to them, platform provider can be identified also as a Trusted Service Manager (TSM)
and is the key enabler for OTA transactions which acts as a middleman between service
providers and secure elements within NFC mobiles [36]. At the same time the initialization
and personalization of the SEs, the role of platform provider and outgo/income of each
stakeholder in this business model is analyzed. The major challenge is that the proposed
process involves several different components and instances, which indeed makes the
standardization process difficult. There is high amount of uncertified components within
NFC ecosystem; hence there is no proven security for the OTA transactions.
The proposed model [102] is a beneficial model for the NFC applications that require
OTA transactions. This model can also be studied on smart card web server (SCWS)
applets. However it can be further improved for protecting integrity and confidentiality of
the keys and personal data on SE and avoiding other possible risks.

3.2 Life Cycle Management of SE

The life cycle management of an SE within NFC mobile starts after the issuance of SE
to the user, which covers first process as installation and personalization, and the next
process as remote management process. Rigorous studies on the life cycle management
of SEs are somewhat missing due to the lack of standardization in processes. A study [3]
examines the feasibility of loading, installation, and personalization process of a payment
application on UICC based SEs using the GlobalPlatform specifications. The
experimentation results reveal that the functional roles and actors in a delegated
management business model need to be further examined; since the delegated model
requires partnerships of each service provider with each card issuer, and the complexity
might occur in application management. For other SE options, appropriate models need
to be developed as well.
Another important issue is hosting multiple SEs in an NFC mobile, which needs further
consideration. For example, a mobile phone may contain embedded hardware, or SMC,
together with a UICC. GlobalPlatform performed valuable analysis on the potential
implications of managing multiple SEs in the same mobile handset. They provided two
business models for managing multiple SEs in a single mobile handset as with
aggregation and without aggregation business models [62]. [99] provides a fruitful
proposal for secure management of multiple SE called Secure Element Controller (SEC).
SEC internally controls the communication flow; routes the data streams to the
appropriate SE chip, and handles SEs authentication. Moreover, with the analysis of
security and interoperability, it has been observed that this model has several benefits for
NFC based systems. The model can be also practically implemented and improved with
all SE alternatives instead of only removable ones.

3.3 Open Research Issues

There are still various open research issues such as the ideal SE option,
standardization processes of SE life cycle management process, and so on. To sum up,

13

some critical research issues are identified in this research area that can be examined,
improved, and evaluated by academicians as well as practitioners:
Verification of existing tools within the market such as GlobalPlatform,
Applicability verification of multi-application SE platform management (up to
now performed trials usually include one service. However users would prefer
a dynamic NFC environment including more than one service when
necessary),
Implementation of multiple SEs support within single mobile,
Exploration of MNOs existence in pre-installation and personalization of NFC
applications, whether it creates security related problems or not,
Comparison of bearer alternatives in OTA downloading and personalization
processes in terms of security, data transmission, and other issues,
Clarification of key management and key rotation issues, especially for each
SE alternatives when loading and installing applications,
Analysis of life-cycle management perspective of SIM Application Toolkit.

4. NFC Security and Privacy

As same with all information systems, NFC based systems are subject to attacks
those threaten system security and user privacy. As described in [78, 79], we need to
consider that if NFC services are managing our private information, then the applications
of these NFC services and the system interaction must be reliable and safe. In NFC
attacks, the target can be entire NFC system or it may be the just the NFC component
(e.g., tag, reader, mobile, backend) of the NFC system. Someone attacking an NFC
system or an NFC device may desire to place misinformation to an NFC mobile phone or
to an NFC tag. According to the study of [101], the major assets that need to be protected
within NFC based systems are:
The users privacy which is represented by the data stored on the host
controller of NFC mobile such as short messages as well as information on
the SE such as tickets;
NFC functionality and operability of the device;
Functionality of the host controller and applications on SE;
Information exchanged between NFC devices over the RF link;
Information stored on NFC tag.
In terms of standardization, only NFCIP-1 protocols security is standardized so far
which focuses on the information exchange between two NFC mobiles, i.e., peer-to-peer
operating mode. On top of NFCIP-1, NFC-SEC (NFCIP-1 Security Services and Protocol)
standard is promoted to provide security capabilities to it and consists of two different
protocols [43]. Therefore, applications using peer-to-peer mode do not require application
specific encryption mechanisms for the security services those are provided by NFC
components. Actually it is highly necessary to see more NFC specific cryptography
standards for services operating in different modes.

4.1 Security Analysis of Data on NFC Tags

Actually these attacks have high importance for reader/writer mode applications since
NFC tags are the major components of those applications, which provide valuable data
for users. Actually, an attacker can easily manipulate the data stored on the tag using
different activities such as replace or hide original tag on a smart poster with a malicious
tag, break the write protection of the tag and overwrite it with malicious data, clone or
impersonate those tags and so on.
Mulliner [115] performed several vulnerability testing methods by analyzing NDEF
record structure, smart posters, and URI handling through fuzzing tests; and identified

14

some important attacks on NFC tags. The major attacks described in [115] are infecting
NFC mobiles through NFC worms or worm-URL, which are hidden in a smart poster tag,
some spoofing attacks, as well as DOS attacks which can also frustrate the relationship
between customer and service provider.
Attackers can spoof the tag content, which means that attacker supplies false
information such as a fake domain name, false e-mail etc., that looks valid and the
system accepts by mistake. Smart poster URI spoofing is one of the best examples of
spoofing in terms of NFC [115]. The smart poster URI spoofing further allows for attacks
against web browsers, URLs as well as attacks against mobile telephony services using
SMS URIs, telephony URI, and so on. Mulliner aims to improve the fuzzing process
through automation and also develop more efficient methods for analyzing the
vulnerabilities since NFC devices are becoming more complex in future work.
It is possible for an attacker to create a malicious poster with modified NDEF tags by
altering an existing commercial poster [115, 144, 145] that leads malicious content
sharing with attacker. To handle attacks on NFC tags, trustworthiness of the tags on a
smart poster by signing them with appropriate encryption techniques is essential. One
solution is to use signatures in NDEF messages as mentioned in [126, 144]. The study of
[Roland] examines the NFC Forums Signature Record Type Definition (RTD) to enable
adding digital signatures to the NDEF message for protecting the data integrity as well as
enabling authentication. However in another study [144, 145], signature record types
vulnerabilities have been discovered and analyzed, and also some basic guidelines to
avoid the risk of such attacks are outlined. According to the results, signature record type
records needs development for enabling security of NDEF record within a tag.

4.2 Security on Readers

As mentioned earlier, NFC reader is an important NFC device, which mainly enables
card emulation mode applications consisting of an NFC enabled mobile phone on one
side and a reader on the other side. However, there is not any sufficient study on the
security of NFC readers and countermeasures in the literature so far. Furthermore, since
NFC readers are nearly the same with RFID readers, NFC readers can also be subject to
destruction or removal [109]. NFC readers can be stolen especially when they are
situated in unattended places. An NFC reader can contain critical information such as
cryptographic keys, which can be the target of an attacker. Attackers can reach sensitive
information similar within tag impersonation process.

4.3 Security on Radio Frequency Interface

Since NFC is a wireless communication interface, it is obvious that variety of attacks
can be possible when two NFC devices communicate using RF waves. Actually being a
short-range communication is an advantage for securing NFC communication, however
in some cases this is not a strict limitation for the attacker. The study of [78, 79, 88, 154]
performs review of the possible attacks on RF interface of NFC and suggests some
prevention mechanisms and protocols for those attacks. The most discussed attacks are
eavesdropping, DOS (Denial-of-Service) attacks, MIM (Man-in-the-Middle) attacks, relay
attacks, and phishing by social engineering.
The most comprehensive and rigorous analysis is performed in [71] where several
attacks and their countermeasures are assessed with technical details and use cases. In
addition to the mentioned attacks, the study also evaluates the data insertion and
modification attacks as well. The study suggested that the feasibility of the presented
attacks highly depends on the applied strength of the amplitude modulation. Only solution
to protect NFC especially from eavesdropping is establishing a secure channel between
NFC devices with a shared secret between two NFC devices; such as using a standard
key agreement protocol (e.g., Diffie-Hellman based on RSA -Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and

15

Leonard Adleman-, Elliptic Curve Cryptograph) or an NFC specific key agreement

protocols proposed in [71]. For the MIM attack it is indicated that in real world this attack
is practically infeasible since in case of an active device communicating with a passive
device, the perfect alignment of RF field of active device and attackers RF field is
impossible.
In another study [101], the security aspect of NFC technology is examined through
communication interfaces, component and trust levels within NFC system. They have
proposed some mechanisms to protect those interfaces and some of these proposals
also have similarities with the ones proposed in [78, 79]. Some of the interesting ones are
introducing a button to turn on NFC functionality consciously by the user for avoiding
relay attacks, introducing a management instance for the SEs in the device, using signed
tags to prevent phishing attacks and so on.
According to [101], some of the security and privacy issues can also be solved by
technical means and standardization on NFC devices, which is an important research
area. Also testing platforms for analyzing the security of RF interface are missing in the
literature; generally use case approach has been observed.

4.4 NFC Mobile and SE Security

Another important part of the NFC based systems is the security of NFC mobile and
its SE. In a related study [101], an assessment on the importance of NFC mobile and SE
security is performed. If SE security is not considered; applications on the host controller
may run without the knowledge of the user, or malware applications may be installed on
host controller or SE that can make use of other data stored on the device, processes
may be initialized by the NFC controller, or OTA management of SE may be
eavesdropped, or an attacker may add a modified SE to the NFC mobile and make use of
security leaks. Hence, some certificate-based authentication mechanisms beside the
strength of OS running on the host controller and SE are required that needs attention of
the researchers and academics.
The valuable studies in [52, 54] analyze the skimming and token cloning attack on
NFC mobiles with embedded SE by performing a practical implementation. A number of
security countermeasures (e.g., control measures on NFC SE, mandatory code signing
for NFC communication API, linking applications to Unique Identifiers cryptographically)
are proposed to prevent such a misuse. However in another study [97], this issue is
directly associated with the smart cards, not NFC technology. For other SE options, these
attacks and their feasibility need to be experimented and addressed with effective
security countermeasures.
In another valuable work on SEs [84], an authentication system based on SIM
authentication is presented. It is stated that the SIMs potential in secure storage of keys
enables mobile phone to act as a highly advanced authentication device. With the
proposed key management in [84], it is able to provide a security management for any
service access. Different key management policies can be examined for enabling
authentication and integrity as well. Table 4 provides a brief summary of all possible
security attacks, vulnerabilities of NFC based systems and their solutions according to
the academic studies.

16

Table 4. Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Solutions

NFC Tags

Tag Manipulation (Infecting NFC

Mobiles through NFC Worms, URI
Spoofing, URL Spoofing, Phone Call
Spoofing, SMS Spoofing, DOS Attacks
etc.)
Tag Clonning and Tag Impersonation
Tag Replacement and Tag Hiding

RF Interface

Solutions

Eavesdropping
MIM Attacks
Data Corruption
Data Modification
Data Insertion
DOS Attacks
Relay Attacks
Phishing by Social Engineering

Secure Channel Establishment

between NFC Devices
NFC Specific Key Agreement
Protocols

NFC Mobile and SE

Vulnerabilities and Attacks

Running Applications on Host

Controller (without the knowledge of
the user)
Installation of Malware Applications
on Host Controller or SE
Attacking NFC Controller
Eavesdropping OTA Management of
SE
Adding Modified SE to NFC Mobile
Skimming and Token Cloning Attacks

Certificate-Based Authentication
Mechanisms
Key Management Policies for
Authentication and Integrity for
SE Control Measures on NFC SE
Mandatory Code Signing for NFC
Communication API
Linking Applications to Unique
Identifiers Cryptographically

Signing Tags Appropriate

Encryption Techniques
Using Cryptographic Tag
Authentication Protocols

4.5 Open Research Areas

In terms of technical point of view, security issues in NFC technology are not
completely solved and standardized yet and this actually causes literature to be
immature. Up to now, among a number of proposals, only a small percent of the papers
provides valuable insights on the security issues of NFC technology with implementations
and reliable analysis.
It has been observed that most of the published papers provide application-specific
cryptographic algorithms, protocols, secure platforms and key management mechanisms
with evaluation methods or testing results, such as [28, 29, 30, 33, 51, 63, 167]. They
generally solve only one or few security services (i.e., authentication, data integrity and
so on) and answer specific problems. Appropriate authentication mechanism in financial
transactions is an important research area since NFC has high potential in financial
service domain. Relating with these studies, following future studies are identified which
will be a helpful guide for the academicians interested in security issues of NFC:
Development of alternative NFC specific security and privacy mechanisms,
Development of security mechanisms for protecting NDEF records within a
tag,

17

Proposal of authentication algorithms for signing NFC tags and NFC

applications,
Exploration of vulnerabilities of NFC readers,
Exploration of securing SE activity and enabling control measures on SE,
Experimental comparison of SE alternatives in terms of vulnerability,
Development of prevention mechanisms and protocols for the vulnerabilities in
management of each SE option,
Proposal of countermeasures for relay attacks, implementation of location
proofs for NFC applications on mobiles,
Design of optimized NFC antennas for overcoming the RF interface attacks,
Exploration of middleware and backend systems security especially for card
emulation mode applications,
Study of alternative digital certificate management and certificate authorities,
Proposal of NFC specific alternative key agreement protocols and secure
channel mechanisms to prevent eavesdropping attack besides standard key
agreement mechanisms,
Development of low cost, interoperable, high security frameworks and
platforms; including proper cryptographic measures, signature and
certificates, e.g., Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to increase the size of key
rather than RSA solutions, compatibility of ECC with signature RTDs,
integration of ECC with SEs etc.
Development of simple and well structured testing and simulation tools for
NFC security,
Clarification of legal restrictions, policies and regulations in NFC context,
Exploration of NFC in terms of privacy sensitivity and ethical issues.

5. NFC Ecosystem
From the ecosystem point of view [36], NFC industry has a new emerging business
environment opportunities and large value chain including several industries and
organizations such as mobile network operators, banking and payment services,
semiconductor producers and electronic appliances, software developers, other
merchants including transport operators and retailers. The potential business
opportunities of NFC technology has impressed many organizations with a great
excitement especially organizations in mobile financial services industry.
Since NFC technology is made up of several components, it cuts across boundaries of
many organizations from diverse business sectors. All parties have already experienced
and agreed on the fact that NFC services to end users cannot be provided by a single
firm. From the technical point of view, the standardization of NFC technology has already
started. However NFC take-off has been slower than expected. In [97,100], it is
mentioned that the use cases for the end customer are clear but the structure of the
ecosystem as well as its value chain is not set yet. The main reason of this slow take-off
is highly related with the formation of a common understanding and vision in NFC
technology among participating organizations and industries. Thus, a mutually beneficial
business model could not have been sustained yet.
In [7, 8, 9, 10], the deficiencies of NFC based solutions collaborating with existing
contactless and smart card standards are explored in a comprehensive approach. In
accordance with these studies, the problems within the NFC ecosystem can be identified
as follows:
Technological and operational problems:

18

Currently mobile NFC applications are handset specific. Hence, service

providers and mobile operators have to develop and maintain a unique
application for each NFC device model.
Although NFC technology warrants the separation of various applications
on the same chip with very high security and minimal risk of interference;
some certain security specifications prohibit this coexistence. Thus, the
management of multiple applications on the same chip is also an
unsolved issue.
OTA service provisioning is a great benefit of mobile technology.
However, diverse technical OTA solutions exist and these are not
interoperable with each other [9]. As also discussed in [110], Todays
OTA solutions have capacity limits. When entering new environments with
more sophisticated banking applications, the current OTA solutions do not
have sufficient enrolment capacity to provide the required security, power,
duration and usability.
Currently, different technical infrastructures of secure elements (SEs) for
different NFC enabled services exist; hence each actor proposes a model
that brings more advantage to that actor than others. For example MNOs
propose SIM based models, since they can control the UICC cards and
hence can receive more profit if this model is used.
Managerial and strategic problems:
The revenue to be shared is enormous and this creates failure in common
understanding and vision in working with suitable and necessary business
models in NFC ecosystem.
Participating organizations to the ecosystem are powerful in their own
industry, so that they all think that the other parties must follow their
needs.
To achieve a good business model; interoperability, compatibility and standardization
of the accepted NFC technology model are essential. It is also important to drive
cooperation of partners in the ecosystem and also to enable customer acceptance.
Currently there is a tremendous amount of work on organizing the contributions and
interests of all entities, and better governance of the overall ecosystem. From the
technical point of view, to create sustainable business models for NFC services, some
issues need to be completely solved from all involving parties aspects (Figure 14). Three
main issues (i.e., secure element issuer, platform manager and OTA provider) generally
determine and structure business model for an NFC service currently. These issues can
also be referred as functional roles and responsibilities that need to be handled by a
single entity or multiple entities in NFC business model.

Who will manage the life

cycle of SE platform?

Whose OTA platform will be

used for management of SE
platform?
OTA Platform

Remote OTA
Services for
Managing SE

Who will issue and

own the SE?

NFC Mobile
Issuing and
owning SE
Secure
Element

SE Issuer

Figure 14. Creating Business Model

19

In addition to this approach, a good methodology for sustaining NFC business models
is provided in [82]. This study explores NFC mobile ticketing business models holistically
and identifies critical issues that affect the commercial success of NFC ticketing service. It
utilizes a theoretical framework called as STOF (Service, Technology, Organization and
Finance) model, which offers a good analytic tool for identifying the critical issues related
to diverse participants within NFC mobile ticketing ecosystem. The framework focuses on
four interrelated domains as service, technology, organization, and finance to create a
holistic view in evaluating business models; hence it helps to create value for both
customers and other players within ecosystem.
Another study in [7] explains a technically transparent and uniform platform called
host application for managing multiple services dynamically on an NFC mobile,
irrespective of the handset type or manufacturer. This provides also well-structured
methodology to identify the commercial dependencies, problems within ecosystem, and
to distribute risks between key stakeholders. Actually practical implementation of such
business model proposals is missing in the literature. The literature review performed in
[Papermz] also indicates that approximately 9.46% of the NFC literature focuses on
NFC ecosystem and business issues. Business models of the NFC technology need to
be clearly considered with methodologies and design principles that have theoretical
proofing.

5.1 Open Research Issues

Some challenging research areas related with the NFC ecosystem that should be
examined are listed below.
Development of sustainable ecosystem model for NFC services including
revenue-cost analysis, SE usage, competency and feasibility analysis,
Exploration of economic performance of NFC based systems,
Examination of proposed NFC applications business impacts and models
based on some theoretical frameworks in a holistic approach like in study [x],
Business analysis of complex NFC applications such as NFC based
transportation and NFC payment systems,
Validation and test of new business model solutions,
Exploration of business case opportunities based on demography, regulation,
market structure, and infrastructure readiness etc.,
Identification of liability issues, customer care, and division of other related
roles and responsibilities between the key stakeholders,
Standardization and certification of OTA infrastructure and platform, security
mechanisms, NFC applications and so on; the certification of this chain of
components is vital in order to establish an NFC ecosystem,
Standardization and certification of SEs and their life cycle management;
common security criteria for SE is highly essential for deployment of NFC
services,
Comparison and evaluation of SE issuing process of MNOs and other
providers, and OTA processes in different geographical regions.

6. NFC Applications
Since NFC technology is started to be promoted, various real-life applications have
been evolved. An NFC literature review study in [135] revealed that, about 40% of the
NFC literature concentrated on developing new NFC applications. Indeed, design
artifacts, which propose composed applications or services operating in two or more
modes can be seen in NFC literature [134].

20

6.1 Review on NFC Applications and Service Domains

6.1.1 Healthcare Applications
In the last decades, one of the fields where IT is playing fundamental role is
healthcare. Providing effective and appropriate healthcare services is one of the most
important objectives of information and communication technologies. It is seen from the
literature that NFC plays significant role in health service domain due to its easy use with
lower consumption property. NFC provides user-friendly remote health monitoring,
controlling, and tracking systems [15, 16, 18, 74, 132, 161], and electronic data capturing
services [111, 112, 140]. There are also some services that aim to improve the care
dependent peoples quality of life such as NFC enabled prescription system [164],
storage of encrypted medical data on tags [40], adverse drugs reaction and allergy
detection systems in pharmaceutical and medical care [77, 80].

6.1.2 Smart Environment Applications

In technological perspective, smart environment is defined in [149] as a physical
world that is richly and invisibly interwoven with sensors, actuators, displays, and
computational elements and also embedded seamlessly in the everyday objects of our
lives, and connected through a continuous network. NFC technology can be also buried
in applications that address diverse and heterogeneous needs and capabilities of users in
the real world, and make users life easier.
Most of the smart environments are enabled by NFC tags that are distributed around.
In accordance with [75], tags can provide support in users everyday life activities by
establishing a bridge between the physical and digital worlds when they are ubiquitous in
the everyday environments of users and the tags become an integral part of physical
space, altering the way humans perceive and behave in it.
It is possible to see innovative examples of smart environment in the NFC literature,
which makes use of NFC tags to simplify utilization of existing functions of a system [160],
to control a system and perform services remotely [24, 75, 139, 149, 150, 151, 155] and
also to provide information channel [1, 12, 23, 68, 69, 147, 153]. N-CASH is another
example for NFC enabled smart environment [25, 26] that clearly describes the creation
of a smart space, which can be activated by NFC mobile to control devices such as home
appliances. The appliances are controlled and driven by the request from NFC mobile
that uses predefined ontology and rule based reasoning. So, NFC mobile acts as the key
to enter the space as well as provide personalized control of a variety of appliances in
that space.

6.1.3 Data Exchange & Sharing Applications

The exchange of data, image, or similar content between two NFC mobile is also
another important application domain provided by NFC technology. Especially today,
between potential business partners, exchanging contact data is really important for
continuity of the relationship in business world. The proposed system, named
VisiExchange prototype [38], enables mobile devices to share data by peer-to-peer
operating mode and eliminates the risk of unwanted data transfer with third parties.

6.1.4 Mobile Payment, Ticketing & Loyalty Applications

With the market and technological developments, successful mobile payment
solutions have already been launched over the world. Actually some countries are much
more advanced in terms of deployed technology and implemented business cases since
governments and influential mobile network operators (MNOs) in those countries have

21

powerful impact on enhancing the development of mobile payment services [131].

Various technologies contributed for the development of mobile payment systems such
as RFID technology, contactless smart cards, Short Message Service (SMS), USSD
(Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and so on.
Currently, integration of NFC technology with mobile payment systems brought new
and innovative business solutions. Payment, ticketing and loyalty applications are
possibly the most well-known and promising everyday applications of NFC technology
and have the most complexity in ecosystem aspect as well. Thus it can be seen that most
of the trials and projects (e.g., Payez Mobile Project [138], Pay-Buy-Mobile Project [66],
SIESTA Project [5]) are implemented in this application domain. Some of these projects
still continue with growing participating entities. From the academic point of view, some
valuable studies have been performed as well as some fruitful usability and user
experience analyses in payment and payment related application domains. Some
examples are:
An automated reservation and ticketing service for tourists, and a system for
car parking access and payment system for ticketing [5, 6],
Virtual ticketing system and secure mCoupon protocol [1, 39, 73],
Secure payment service by Smart Touch Project [137],
NFC Ticketing system with a simple architecture, including usability testing
[59],
NFC Loyal system including a secure data exchange model to promote
payment and loyalty applications on secure elements [133],
Offline Tapango system for electronic ticketing process including comparison
with traditional paper ticketing process [117],
Offline NFC payment service with electronic vouchers [37],
Secure payment system built on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
including payment authorization process [83].

6.1.5 Entertainment Applications

Although NFC technology has high potential for applications like payment and
ticketing, applying NFC technology in entertainment and social media applications is
receiving more and more attention on user side. Some examples from the literature are
Pass the Bomb and Exquisite Touch games [116] which are implemented with a multiplayer purpose; Whack-a-Mole game [20, 21] which combines dynamic NFC displays to
explore mobile interaction with tagged, physical objects can leverage mobile gaming;
PhonePhone as an NFC enabled musical instrument [76].

6.1.6 Social Network Applications

Currently, Internet based social network applications are booming with popular
services like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter etc. NFC technology is also an
enabler for social networking tools and can be integrated with the existing social network
applications [67, 70, 90, 156]. Generally, these applications enable users to interact with
tagged physical objects and publish information with the virtual world. Some trials are
also using peer-to-peer mode to allow users to share and access their personal
information, to create friendships in a more tangible and user friendly way [56, 67, 156].
Another good way of promoting social network services is to provide also advertising and
location based services such as TaggyNet [4].

22

6.1.7 Educational Service Applications

Currently, universities and schools became a valuable research area for development
and testing NFC technology. Various implementations of NFC services and prototypes in
universities can be seen to create smart environments for the students as well as to
perform efficient work force management and easier administration services for the staff.
Up to now, diverse innovative NFC services in university settings are tested and
implemented [106, 107, 108, 148] such as identification, payment services in university
cafes and restaurants, photocopy services, reservation and payment of sports facilities,
and also resources control and management services, teaching services, dissemination
of information and accessing to services.
Also NFC technology can be used in interactive learning process of students [57, 152].
For example, the proposed Moodle system in [57] enables use of games in teaching and
learning process. It brings together the characteristics of a common strategy game with
an evaluation system; and enables to motivate and reward students by using NFC
mobiles. Other valuable examples related with the efficient work force management in
school settings are NFC enabled attendance supervision system [45, 46], and
examination systems supported by NFC technology in universities [159].

6.1.8 Location Based Applications

Location based services (LBSs) are used for enabling an information service by using
the geographical position of the users mobile device. With the integration of LBSs with
NFC technology, users behavior can be tracked and user experiences can be improved
[72, 136]. Depending on the position of the user, most common examples are displaying
friends nearby, broadcasting advertisement of stores nearby through SMS/MMS, and
discovering nearest post office depending on our geographical position. Hence these
services provide location based, customized messages or information to users [72, 157].
Such services can also be integrated with NFC enabled the indoor navigation systems
[76, 136] to provide more value added services to the users, especially in shopping
centers.

6.1.9 Work Force and Retail Management Applications

Furthermore NFC technology contributes in solving the problems within the business
world and work force management. For example, in retail industry, retailers face various
problems in sales data management such as high cost, low security, and poor
performance of real-time documentation [86, 142, 168]. Nowadays, it is possible to see
the advantages of NFC technology in improving the existing business processes within
companies [85, 87, 96, 118, 130,166].

6.2 Evaluation of NFC Applications

Each NFC application provides different benefits and underlying values for its user.
The study in [128,129] performed valuable review of literature and exploration of NFC
services benefits. The benefits of those services can be examined by classifying them
into their operating modes. The communication essentials are different in each operating
mode, and these differences make change in benefits and usage areas. Table 5 provides
the summary of NFC applications benefits in terms of their operating modes.

23

Table 5. Benefits and Underlying Values of NFC Applications

Reader/Writer Mode

Peer-to-Peer Mode

Increases mobility
Decreases physical
effort
Ability to be adapted by
many scenarios
Easy to implement

Easy data exchange

Device pairing

Card Emulation Mode

Physical object
elimination
Access control

6.3 Exploring User Experiences in NFC Applications

According to the resources [127], the NFC simplifies the human environment
interaction and enables users only to wave their mobile devices in front of everyday
objects augmented with RFID tags in order to trigger intelligent services, which makes
NFC easy to use. By this way a user can access services, set up connections, make
payment, or use a ticket. Up to now, when we look at the literature, it is seen that only few
studies [55, 81, 130, 165] have performed well structured usability analysis on NFC to
measure the success of trials and user experience.
An academic work for a subjective usability study of a student council voting is studied
in [130] which compares NFC mobile voting with web based voting scenario. NFC voting
gained a higher usability than web based voting with a score of 82.75 whereas web
based voting gained a score of 78.50 out of 100. The results of the usability test showed
that NFC technology has the potential to increase the usability of systems. As a result,
the rise of NFC compatible mobile phones and services will bring new opportunities to
make our lives easier. In the context of voting, NFC provided a practical and easy to use
environment.
Another study in [81] also performed usability tests on NFC to identify how NFC based
systems could be used to improve mobile solution work flows and usability. The study
showed that NFC can improve mobile workflows by solving different related problems. In
the pilot cases, NFC technology dealt with the problems of access to real-time
information, applications and instructions in the field, real time updating of data, removal
of human errors, reducing users memory payload and so on. The study concluded that
NFC based solutions are easy to use, but the small and limited keyboard of mobile
devices causes difficulties for the design of the models. NFC based solutions should take
into account the place of the tags, ease of the application usage, and the amount of
textual input. The study showed that user friendliness was taken into account in the pilots,
but it did not always impact on the user experience.

6.4 Challenges and Factors Influencing Design of NFC Based Systems

Several costs may affect the design and development of NFC based systems directly
or indirectly. In many academic studies, NFC technology seems to have a cost cutting
affect, however financial and economic side of NFC application and system development
are not considered in a clear way for practitioners and system developers. Relating with
[141], some important factors influencing the design of NFC based systems and
applications have been explored as follows:
Cost of the NFC tag, tag placement and management,
Cost of the NFC readers and reader placement,
Cost of training and reorganization,

24

Cost of developing NFC applications,

SE Programming and management,
System integration costs,
Cost of OTA processes,
Testing costs of the NFC systems and applications,
Maintenance costs of overall systems.

6.5 Developing NFC Applications

Developing NFC applications is an important part of NFC technology. In order to
develop NFC applications, complete understanding of NFC technology and operating
modes are required. There are two different types of applications in NFC services;
Graphical User Interface (GUI) application and SE application. GUI application exists in
all operating mode applications and provides an interface, which allows a user to interact
with the mobile device. It also provides the capability to read/write from/to NFC
components. On the other hand, SE applications are needed in order to provide a secure
and trusted environment for security required applications (e.g., payment, loyalty,
ticketing).
There are various development tools on the market targeting different mobile phones.
Some of these development tools are Android SDK (Software Development Kit) for
Android mobile phones; Qt SDK for Symbian3 mobile phones; Bada SDK for Bada
operating system phones and Series 40 Nokia 6212 NFC SDK for Nokia 6212 devices.
Each development tool has a unique SDK and uses different language. The developer
who wants to develop application on a specific platform needs to know that platforms
programming language and NFC APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) built for that
platform. Fortunately, today operating principles of different platforms NFC APIs are
similar to each other. Hence the developers can easily work and develop NFC
applications on different platforms.

6.6 Open Research Issues

We believe that future research effort is needed in this area as well. Up to now,
various NFC trials, projects and prototypes have been done; however some of them give
us valuable insights about the technologys development, usability, adoption, and
acceptance issues. Due to the slowness of standardization efforts, some practitioners do
not answer completely their research questions and complete their research with the
expected goals. For example, there are still some unsolved issues in card emulation
mode and SE programming which create different and propriety NFC solutions,
incompatibility of applications as well as restricts the interoperability of different platforms.
Some research areas are listed as follows:
Development of novel NFC applications those will help growth of NFC
ecosystem,
Comparison of vulnerabilities of NFC applications in different domains,
Comparison of alternative ubiquitous wireless services with NFC and a review
study based on this work,
Exploration of co-existence NFC applications on the same SE,
Analysis of compatibility and interoperability of different NFC mobile
architectures for running applications using NDEF message exchange,
Exploration of tag management, placement, and maintenance,
Operational and strategic study on integration of NFC based components and
related issues into a larger system such as number of tags to be placed,
required training, and skilled employees,

25

Methodology development for smart posters including visual symbols as NFC

tags,
Proposal of multiple OS support for NFC environment,
Integration of seamless web services with NFC applications,
Proposal of alternative application development environments based on
needs,
Exposure of software development methodologies for NFC applications,
Development of design principles, methodologies and models for building
specific applications such as context aware or smart environment,
Creation of user interaction models for different application domains,
Exploration of user perception and preferences for NFC systems,
Identification of barriers to and critical success factors for NFC adoption,
Exploration of different cultures and cultural norms impact on NFC usability
case studies,
Exposure of psychological and relational issues in NFC adoption,
Implementation of longitudinal field studies on NFC usability with well
structured statistical results,
Analysis of security and privacy issues impact on adoption and acceptance of
NFC technology. security
Clarification patent issues in NFC based systems.

7. Conclusion
In recent years, NFC has become an attractive research area for many researchers
and practitioners due to its exploding growth and its promising applications and related
services. The number of publications in NFC research area is increasing continuously
since 2005 [135]. With this study, we provide a comprehensive survey on NFC
technology and its ecosystem including review of all academic studies as well as some
valuable white papers of industry pioneers within NFC ecosystem. Such as survey study
is a beneficial way for understanding the current status of NFC research area.
Current academic studies on NFC are mainly published on conferences. In the
contrary only a few journal publications exist. We have reviewed all such publications and
referred the significant works in this survey. With this survey, we want to encourage more
insight into the critical issues and problems of NFC technology, and facilitate providing
solutions to the open research areas which are presented in this paper.
To sum up, there is a clear need especially for more journal publications to solve the
issues that have mentioned in the open research problem sections. Academicians and
researchers need to focus on these recommended research issues, and give publications
that have high level of research both in width and breadth [134, 135] to maintain the
advancement of knowledge in NFC research and to identify the gap between theory and
practice.

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